Cardinal Raymond Burke has said that the Pope’s newly released post-synodal exhortation cannot change Church teaching and practice, emphasizing that the document is not magisterial.

“The Church has historically been sensitive to the erroneous tendency to interpret every word of the pope as binding in conscience, which, of course, is absurd,” he wrote in an article published by the National Catholic Register today. “Pope Francis makes clear, from the beginning, that the post-synodal apostolic exhortation is not an act of the magisterium.”

Burke adds that the Church takes care that “a personal reflection of the Pope, while received with the respect owed to his person, is not confused with the binding faith owed to the exercise of the magisterium.”

“Certain commentators confuse such respect,” which is rightly due to the Pope, “with a supposed obligation to ‘believe with divine and Catholic faith’ (Canon 750, § 1) everything contained in the
document,” says Burke. “But the Catholic Church, while insisting on the respect owed to the Petrine Office as instituted by Our Lord Himself, has never held that every utterance of the Successor of St. Peter should be received as part of her infallible magisterium.”

Cardinal Burke calls on the Church to make clear that the Pope’s personal opinions are not magisterial. “While the Roman Pontiff has personal reflections which are interesting and can be inspiring, the Church must be ever attentive to point out that their publication is a personal act and not an exercise of the Papal Magisterium.”